I have read all of the ITIL books. I like them all, but of course I am a purist when it comes to best practices. I think the Planning to Implement book has some good straightforward advice. It helps to reinforce my own view that Service Management is more of a philosophy or culture that it is about implementing a number of processes. I am still working on convincing my own organization of my view and even others outside my firm.

hi, i'm still a newb in ITIL. I'm still confused where do I have to start. I'm try to looking for some ITIL refference, and i found so many ITIL official books, don't know which book I have to read.
Is anyone could give me any refference of ITIL foundation books that will works for a beginner like me. Which books i have to read to start learning about ITIL.

Start with one of the ITIL overview books (itSMF Pocket guides are good--small portable and relatively cheap--available from the IT Service Management organization websites). Then head to either the Green Book (Planning to Implement) or the Red (Service Delivery) or Blue (Service Support) books. Then dive into the others as needed.

It has a few things in it that are good value - and will help you understand the philosophy of ITIL, and I have referred to it in a number of my posts on this forum, but....

From a practical point of view though - for people who are actually planning an implementation - it's a checklist, and a pretty expensive checklist at that. It has a lot of summaries of methodologies, but you will either need to already know them, or go somewhere else to get the details.

For implementers it will only be peanuts compared to the overall cost of an implementation - so get it for the value it will add - or just becasue it's nice to complete the set

For beginners, who are just lookiing for an overview, Michael's advice is excellent.